


In Humanity

by Fujiwara_no_Seimei



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fujiwara_no_Seimei/pseuds/Fujiwara_no_Seimei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barnaby sees graphic inhumanity for the first time when he rescues a child from a psycopath.  Tiger has seen such acts of cruelty countless times before, and is there to help Barnaby through the hardest part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Humanity

“That was your first time, wasn’t it, Bunny?” Kotetsu said, voice gentle, gently closing the door to the locker room.  
Barnaby did not respond. Just sat on the bench, hunched over, trying to breathe slowly, trying not to give in to whatever amalgam of screaming, crying, and praying was trying to erupt from him.  
Kotetsu sat down next to him. The energy saver lights were on, so the room was dark. The other heroes had gone home long ago.  
Kotetsu leaned over and rubbed his hand against his partner’s back. Slowly, gently, in wide circles against the taught middle under his shoulder blades. Barnaby inhaled, biting back the screaming that wanted to come out.

\---

It was the most horrible thing he had ever seen.  
They had been warned. The perpetrator was extremely violent, mentally unstable. Had a history of enacting brutal mutilation on little girls. The mission would not be televised.

Thank God it wasn’t.

It might have not been so hard if Barnaby was not the first one on the scene. Tiger was two steps behind, but it might have been a mile for the way time stopped when Barnaby saw the woman cutting off the fingers of the little girl. A little girl very much alive, naked and bleeding and shrieking, and-

Tiger had pushed him out of the way. He had only been standing in shock for a fraction of a second, but it felt like an hour. He couldn’t move. His brain could not process the horror of it, couldn’t accept that such a thing could be done, that a human would do it. That it could happen in front of his eyes, where it was real. Murder of adults was one thing. Mutilation of children was another.

Tiger had had to decide. There was no time to wait for the other heroes, so someone had to take care of the girl, and someone had to apprehend the woman. Tiger kicked the woman down and swept up the child, putting her in Barnaby’s arms, wrapped up with the metallic emergency blanket he’d pulled out of his aidpack.

“Go,” he’d said.

\----

When Kotetsu had finished, he went to the hospital where he expected Barnaby would be waiting to find out how the child would fare. Nathan told him that Barnaby disappeared shortly after delivering the brutalized little girl.

“He was stricken,” Karina said. “I don’t think he’d ever seen...that. Something like that. Before.”  
Kotetsu nodded. He let Karina lean into him and hiccup with little silent sobs into his chest as she tried to work out the vision of blood-stained Barnaby delivering a little girl, wrapped in blood and stiff fireproof fabric, pale and limp from blood loss with hands that no longer looked like hands.

It was hard to know that people had the capacity to do such horrible things. Even if you’d seen it before.

So it was another half hour before Kotetsu made his way back to the locker room to gather his things. Some part of him knew he’d find Barnaby there.

\----

“The first time is always the hardest, Bunny.”  
Barnaby still didn’t respond, shaking a little as Kotetsu’s gentle, broad hands seemed to coax emotion closer the the surface of his skin.  
“They’re crazy, Bunny. Normal people can’t do things like that to other people. People who do things like that aren’t human anymore. Don’t let it affect your faith in humanity.”  
“Humanity,” Barnaby whispered in a half-laugh.  
“ _Barnaby._ ”  
Hearing his actual name come out of his partner’s mouth was a bit of a surprise, and it stilled him for a second.  
“Kotetsu,” he said, the word hard on his tongue like it wasn’t usually.  
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”  
“There aren’t words, Kotetsu.”  
“Then don’t use words. _Bunny_.” And Kotetsu leaned over, pulling Barnaby over to his chest. Wrapped his arms around him as he broke down. Little spasms quickly turning into keening cries as the dam in his heart broke open.

Barnaby’s sobs echoed in the dark locker room. He shuddered with every cry, wailing out his sadness and the things he’d seen that day. That he’d seen a woman, made of all the things all the other women he’d known were made of, brutalize a living child. His tears made wet stains against Kotetsu’s green shirt. At some point, Kotetsu had turned and straddled the bench, holding Barnaby closer to him. Barnby’s arms were limp, letting himself be held, be supported, be comforted. His whole body hurt, but he couldn’t stop crying. He didn’t know how he’d ever stop.

\---

When Barnaby woke up, that familiar, wide-palmed hand was stroking his hair. Strong arms were still wrapped around him. He shifted, and Kotetsu loosened his grip on Barnaby, who looked to all the world like a child who had cried away a nightmare in his father’s arms.

His muscles cried out against the stiffness accumulated from being in that position. He looked at Kotetsu’s face, it was tired and wrung out, and he wondered how long the old man had sat there holding him.

“You had a nightmare,” Kotetsu said. “It was about a monster. Not a human being.”  
Barnaby rubbed his face, raw and slightly damp. His eyes burned.  
“You might have to face other monsters like her, you know. It’s not so hard after the first time. But it’s never _not_ hard.”  
Barnaby swallowed. His mouth was dry.  
“How many... _monsters_ have you fought, Kotetsu?” Barnaby asked, voice quiet and hoarse. The first words he’d spoken in what seems like ages.

“Too many to count, Bunny. Too many to count.”  
He stood up ans stretched back, wincing. Clearly, it had not been the best position for the old man’s back. Barnaby wondered again how long he had been held. Kotetsu leaned down and fished a bottle of water out of his bag and handed it to Barnaby, as if he’d known how it felt after crying from the deepest reaches of one’s heart.

“The hardest part, Bunny,” he said, picking up his bag, “Is not that there are people who can do such awful things.” Barnaby noticed a familiar kind of sadness wash over the old man’s face, making him look older than by day.

“It that somewhere, there’s a God that lets such awful things happen.”

After Kotetsu left, door closing with a clank louder than he remembered it ever closing, Barnaby wondered if maybe Kotetsu was trying to relay a sort of wisdom to him he wasn’t experienced enough to fully understand. If maybe Kotetsu had, over time, discovered or learned a way of coping with inhumanity.

Or maybe, he wondered...

...maybe he was trying to tell him that you never did.

**Author's Note:**

> T_T This ended up being very melancholic. Sorry the world is so cruel, Bunny.
> 
> Anon Meme Prompt: "Being a hero isn't always glamorous; sometimes they face the very worst humanity has to offer, and still have to chose to get up and save people the next day.
> 
> Barnaby, directly having fought one of those worst criminals and saving the innocent lives that were hurt by him, being comforted by Kotetsu - who, being an old hat at this, has encountered this sort of thing before.
> 
> Its only much latter, when both Bunny's heart and pride has recovered, that he stops to wonder who helped Kotetsu the first time he saw something like this."


End file.
